Curiously titled, there are two lots of "fury" to consider in this film as an angry mob burn down the jail where an innocent stranger is being held on circumstantial evidence, while subsequently the stranger survives and in a fit of anger decides to keep his survival a secret in order that the lynch mob can be prosecuted for first degree murder. It is an interesting premise and Spencer Tracy is superb in the lead role, playing a character who becomes ever-so-slowly less sympathetic with his increasingly bloodthirsty desire for revenge. Walter Abel also provides good support as the district attorney in charge of the case who maintains a sense of humour in court, while Sylvia Sidney is effective as Tracy's girlfriend, shown in striking close-up at several key points. The completely silent scene in which she rushes to see the jail alight is an utterly breathtaking sequence and with Fritz Lang at the helm the film looks as good as one would expect. For all its virtues, 'Fury' is not a subtle film though, and it is hard to say what comes off as more detrimental: the loud thunderstorms that only start up as Tracy argues with his brothers near the end, or Tracy's preachy speech in the final scene. The plot is also a little hard to buy at times (would Tracy really be locked up over such sketchy evidence?), but if nothing else, 'Fury' will definitely make you think twice about carrying salted peanuts in your pocket. The intense scenes of the angry mob in action also offer a stark reminder of just how irrational we, as human beings, can be in the wrong set of circumstances.

I just finished reading the section of the new Spencer Tracy biography which discusses the making and success of "Fury", long one of my favorite Tracy films. In fact, before this early MGM film of his, his only truly notable films had been "The Power And The Glory" and "Dante's Inferno". The shooting schedules for Tracy's "Fury" and Tracy and Gable's "San Francisco" overlapped. Apparently, Fritz Lang was a pain in the patutty...a virtual tyrant directing this film, to the point where Tracy and Lang barely spoke. Nevertheless, the results then (much bigger box office than MGM had anticipated) and now (as this is seen to be an early Tracy milestone) speak for themselves.The story begins easily enough -- a guy (Tracy) and a gal (Sylvia Sydney) are hoping to marry, but to earn more money (this was in the middle of the Great Depression) they separate temporarily (which turns out to be over a year). He does all right, opening a gas station. He buys a car and goes to meet and marry Sydney.Then things turn dark. He is picked up on suspicion of kidnapping, which of course he was not guilty of. Placed in jail, while a hick deputy sheriff (Walter Brennan) blabs around the community. A mob develops, but instead of lynching him, they burn the jail down, with Tracy and his little dog in it. Burned to death as his fiancé watches.Or was he? Tracy suddenly appears as a dark, malevolent specter before his brothers...alive...and ready to exact his justice simply by letting the leaders of the lynch mob be found guilty and condemned to death in a court room. But, through an excellent trial sequence, Tracy slowly goes nearly mad with revenge, and ultimately his brothers begin to turn against him. But meanwhile, the guilt of 22 men and women is pretty much proved through newsreel footage. And then, when a surprise (and clever) bit of evidence is brought forward, Sydney realizes Tracy is still alive. The question is, will Tracy come forward, or remain silent. Apparently Lang was very angry over the edits MGM made to the film, particularly the final scene...and perhaps a kiss in front of the judge was taking it just a bit too far...perhaps embracing would have been enough.Tracy is superb here. No longer a "junior" actor, but a calculated actor who masters his role. Sydney is just as wonderful.Walter Abel performs well as the district attorney trying the men leading the mob. Bruce Cabot is fine as the worst of the mob leaders. Edward Ellis is excellent as the hard, but fair sheriff battling against overwhelming odds. It's unlikely you'll recognize many of the other supporting actors here, but they all play their parts well and lend a believability to the story.A part of my DVD collection, and one of the rare films I will award an "8" to. A must if you love cinema.

It's Fritz Lang's illustrated gloss on Aristotle's observation that "At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst." Lang himself, an escapee from the Nazis, was a fascinating director, given to striding around in riding breeches and boots, shouting orders through a megaphone, seeing things through a monocle. He directed a couple of pot boilers but seemed attracted most to stories of revenge -- taken too far. You can see it in "Rancho Deluxe" and "The Big Heat." Sometimes the work looks a little crude today but it's sublime in comparison to modern revenge movies like "The Punisher" and "Sudden Impact." "Fury", though it has its crude moments, is a fine moral lesson and a decent study of human nature. Spencer Tracy is in love with Sylvia Sidney, who is leaving him in Chicago for a better paying job out West, where he will join her after saving a bit of money. This is 1936 and everybody is broke. The two of them ache for marriage. He finally drives west but is coincidentally caught up in a man hunt for four kidnappers and held by a hick sheriff because, like one of the miscreants, he's fond of salted peanuts and happens to be carrying a five-dollar bill with the same serial numbers as one of the ransom notes. This is probably an echo of the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, a sensation in the early 30s.Before he can be tried, the local newspaper convicts him and gossip spreads through the small town, exaggerating the thin evidence against him. Lang adopts a silent-movie technique and during a montage of women gossiping inserts a shot of a clutch of hens clucking.At any rate the mob attacks the jail in which Tracy is being held. Unable to reach him in his cell, they set fire to the building and in a striking shot, Lang shows us the frantic Tracy pressed against the window bars, surrounded by flames, while the crowd stands outside and watches him in utter silence, grinning, until they drive him from the window with a shower of stones.Briefly, Tracy secretly escapes and through the agency of his two brothers brings two dozen mob members to trial for murder. Where the money for this suit came from is a mystery. But the experience has burned Tracy, body and soul. He skulks in his brothers' apartment, grinning demonically as the trial proceeds and the twenty-two defendants wriggle and squirm. They're supposed to be suffering from monumental remorse as well, but we see little of it. If given the MMPI they'd probably produce the "caught psychopath" pattern -- high in psychopathy and high in depression, because after all they've been caught. Tracy is turning into an obsessed maniac himself, forging evidence, going unshaven, drinking, bitter, looking like Mister Hyde.I won't reveal the end. It's a rather long film but not one that's liable to put you to sleep. Some of the courtroom dialog is rather sophisticated, or at least so it sounds to untutored ears. The "crudities" I mentioned earlier include some confusion about what's taking place and where. The little town is called Strand. But at one point, when I thought Tracy was sneaking around the streets of Strand, he stops and peers through a shop window that's in Chicago. Capital City is mentioned but if anything takes place there I missed it.None of these carps detract from an interesting film involving some tough moral choices.

A movie about an innocent man unjustly accused of murder seeking vengeance against the mob that tries to lynch him runs the risk of being either melodramatic (think Mel Gibson) or preachy (think Frank Capra). "Fury" manages to be both, but brilliantly. Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, the wrongly imprisoned man, in a performance that would be legendary if this movie weren't too disturbing to be considered a Hollywood classic. Joe, a down-on-his-luck auto mechanic in love with a pretty schoolteacher, would be almost cloyingly naive (he eschews tobacco for peanuts) if Tracy weren't so restrained and naturalistic. There isn't a hint of darkness or menace to this good, simple man, which makes his transformation into a scheming, manipulative liar after he's arrested and assaulted even more unnerving. A good actor could play a wounded innocent (think Tom Hanks) or a bloodthirsty avenger (think Lee Marvin). Only a genius could play both, and that's what Tracy does when he becomes the "fury" of the title. Of course, he's assisted by one of the greatest directors in film history, Fritz Lang (think "Metropolis"). Lang didn't shy from the grotesque -- you need a strong stomach to get through Peter Lorre's extreme close-ups in "M" -- and here he depicts the mob that burns down the prison holding Tracy as a bunch of freaks from a Bruegel painting. Was Lang lampooning the Nazi scum who had recently chased him out of native Germany, or was he ridiculing the rednecks and yokels in his adopted home of America? I'm not sure, but I do know that the lynch mob's assault on the county jail is pretty sickening without the blood, gore and throbbing music that modern directors would pile onto it. The movie climaxes with an eerily prescient count sequence which is clearly a battle of legal chicanery, not good vs. evil. There's even a foreshadowing of trial by mass media. Staggering.There are, sad to say, a couple of genuine if non-fatal flaws in the form of two Hollywood legends -- Sylvia Sidney and Terry the Terrier. Sylvia plays Katherine, Joe's love interest and ultimately his conscience. She's pretty, and she's not a bad actress, but she can't overcome the operatic swooniness of her role, which makes her a bit coarse and cartoonish in contrast to Tracy's depth. If Kate Hepburn had already left RKO for MGM by 1936, she could have made Katherine complex, credible and formidable, and she and Tracy could have made one undisputed masterpiece together. (Hollywood legend she may have been, Hepburn was always a romantic heroine -- she never stared into the face of evil like Sylvia has to do here.) Terry the Terrier, who would achieve immortality as Toto in "The Wizard of Oz," is onhand as Joe's dog Rainbow, who is a slightly too obvious symbol of his kindness. She's cute, but a little saccharine and unnecessary, but she handles her miscasting well and is clearly on her way to better things.